Personal training is one of the most effective ways to achieve your fitness goals
Personal Training is an Investment in your Personal Health and Fitness
PERSONAL TRAINER 
" " Our goal is set out to help those seeking to better themselves through a healthy lifestyle "
" " Our goal is set out to help those seeking to better themselves through a healthy lifestyle "Stacy Helfinstine
Weightlifting builds muscle, self-esteem: Stretching Out
By Martha Neff
February 10, 2009, 9:21AM
By now, I'm pretty comfortable in most fitness settings. Track, trail, road or pool, I can hold my own with just about anyone.
But one place still has the power to reawaken the fear I used to feel in high school gym: the weight room. Every time I enter one, I feel like a misfit.
Well, not anymore. Thanks to Stacy Helfinstine, a trainer at Kings Gym in Bedford Heights and owner of a company called Iron Body USA, I now can lift weights with something resembling confidence.
Working out with Helfinstine, a bodybuilder, was tough. In two hours, she took me through an entire week of lifting, prodding me from one machine to another until I'd tapped every major muscle group.
But I emerged from the ordeal with much more than just soreness. I came out understanding a few key principles that will make every future visit to the weight room more productive.
First, strive for muscle confusion. The last thing you want is to adapt to a small group of motions. Instead, keep your muscles on their toes by making them perform a variety of movements.
Next, pay attention. If building muscle is your goal, you won't get there by going through the motions. Engage your brain. Know which muscles each activity is designed to reach, and concentrate on those while lifting.
Finally, pay attention to the number of repetitions. I'd never been big on counting, but I am now. If you can lift a weight 12 times easy, it's too light. Then again, if you can't do eight reps, it's probably too heavy. What you want is for the last two or three reps to be difficult.
For Helfinstine, a typical week of weight-training consists of four days, each focused on one area: legs, chest, back and arms or shoulders. Off-days are for rest or light activity.
Stacy Helfinstine
| ||||
Holding a 15-pound dumbbell at chest level, I started our leg "day" by squatting 30 times. Then I sat in leg-extension and leg-curl machines, raising light loads and focusing on tightening the target muscle at the top.
For shoulders, I did several exhausting "dead lifts," lifting barbells while keeping my arms straight, looking forward and pulling from my hamstrings. A few times, I threw in a "clean and press," flipping the weight back onto my wrists and then raising it over my head.
Rarely did we work specifically on arms. But I doubt I'll ever find a triceps workout more direct than the one Helfinstine taught me: lightweight bench presses with a reverse grip.
My long, puny arms have never liked push-ups. For an upper-body workout, though, there's nothing better. The trick is to hold your back straight and the abdominal muscles tight. Another good one is lifting two dumbbells overhead simultaneously, one in each hand.
My strong point, apparently, is my back. At the lateral pull-down machine, it took three sets of 12 for 100 pounds to get the better of me. Ditto at the T-bar, an anchored, weighted pole that you straddle and lift.
After that, though, I was spent, and Helfinstine could tell. Exercises were blurring together, and my arms and hamstrings were getting wobbly.
Soreness lingered in my body for days. Even with stretching and resting, I wasn't back to my old self until the following week. That's what I get for cramming.
But it was worth it. I'll never be a bodybuilder like Helfinstine, but at least now I can hold my head up.
By Dale Omori
February 10, 2009, 4:24PM Weight-lifting doesn't have to be an intimidating, confusing experience. Go to www.cleveland.com/healthfit to watch a video on proper techniques featuring Stacy Helfinstine, a personal trainer and body-builder at Kings Gym.
